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In this case, the app itself is in fact open source. The problem is that it relies on a non-free Google/Apple service for detecting contacts. However, I agree: Even such a dependency should strictly be avoided by government apps. This includes not limiting an app to the Play Store and also using alternative channels such as F-Droid.

A "bourgeois pastoral fantasy"? Can you expand on that?

Shouldn't engineers who design social media algorithms have some basic knowledge of social dynamics and psychology?

You seem to be thinking of gender studies? I don't know much about that, especially in the US. It may be right to criticize that field and its methodology. Social science, however, also includes fields like psychology, history and law, all of which I assume you'd agree are hugely important for society.

Also, as I've mentioned in another comment, the article is not advocating for computer science and social sciences to 'become the same', but to improve communication and mutual appreciation and knowledge. (The title is a bit unfortunate.)

I'd like to add that, when building an atom bomb, you are well aware of what you're doing - why you're still doing it is an entirely different topic (an interesting one which, in fact, falls right into the social sciences). Software engineers at facebook, on the other hand, are likely not aware of the full impact of their work. Their seemingly harmless and objective algorithms literally, although indirectly, cause deaths, and the engineers working on them should be aware of that.

> not in small part thanks to social science.

I'm genuinely curious what you are referring to here?

I agree that the market economy is the underlying problem of it all. However, I wouldn't completely dismiss computer scientists' lack of knowledge in social science as part of the reason. I'm hopeful enough to think that, knowing the incredible harm the software they are writing could inflict on other people or society as a whole, some computer scientists would be less willing to participate in it.

Digital platforms? They haven't, that's the point.

Outside of that... I would say it's pretty clear that society benefits from research in law, psychology or history, for example.

I agree that the unfortunate title of the publication makes this unclear, but that's pretty consistent with what the article says:

> Despite the title of this essay, I'm not actually advocating for the institutionalized transfer of computing departments into social science faculties—such a move is no doubt highly impractical and implausible—but rather for a change in mentality, a recognition that the field now and in the future will have more affinities with the concerns of the academic social sciences, and fewer with the natural sciences or engineering.

It's true that nothing is stopping the exchange of knowledge now, but the minor, often bad ethics course in CS doesn't give students the impression that social sciences is a field they can and should learn from. That's why students should be sensitized as to which problems they may face with the software they write, which are directly related to and possibly already examined by social science.

In my opinion, this would be similar to the statistics courses I had in my CS studies: Scratch the surface enough to get a feeling for what's realistically correctly solvable and implementable by a programmer with no deep statistical knowledge. That way, no time is wasted with half-correct implementations caused by not knowing that there's a deeper, complex statistical problem underneath.

Don't you think connecting the field more closely with computer science would help it mature, though? Both sides could benefit from this: Both get methods, challenges and insight from each other. It might bring both a bit closer down to earth - computer science gets a better idea of possible social challenges their work could face or produce; social science gains new perspectives from more technical and practical students.

Don't you think that, even from a strictly scientific perspective, more exchange of knowledge between computer science and social sciences would be good? Isn't it a shame that, for example, social media platforms don't benefit from the decades of research in social science to create a platform that's more beneficial for society? They hit roadblocks and cause problems which could have been easily prevented with this knowledge.

I think it's similar to the relationship between computer science and statistics - both can live without the other, but both have a huge benefit of connecting their knowledge, working together, and even merging their curricula (into data science).

If you haven't read the whole article, I really recommend doing so - I was put off by the title as well, but it's an interesting analysis and makes some good recommendations.

I think that's not in opposition to what the article says. The main point is that computer science largely dismisses social sciences, hitting realizations and creating problems which social scientists have long considered and solved. To fix this, more exchange of knowledge must happen between computer science and social sciences. In order for social sciences to embrace computing, computing must realize that social science is a necessary part of their work.

The Fairphone seems to offer the option to buy it with an open Android OS and no Google apps preinstalled. It also has the added benefit of trying not to kill people in its production process.

The app NewPipe and its web version https://invidio.us/ were recommended in the comments here. They allow you to use YouTube quite well without an account and without the official website/app. However, I imagine through loading videos, YouTube can still collect some data. (I might be wrong though, I don't know exactly how much they pipe through their servers.)

If you want to be completely private, you'll probably have to use TOR together with those alternative clients.

Absolutely, microG is a great project, especially when you need to use proprietary apps which rely on Google APIs. However, with the goal of also generally moving towards free software on my smartphone, I personally only needed the UnifiedNlp part (which is mentioned in the Map section) - in my experience, most free apps don't depend on other Google services.

It's true that Google plays a big role in Android development, but that doesn't mean there's something inherently wrong with Android. It's a good operating system, it's free and open source, and its huge ecosystem and existing userbase (to whom something like LineageOS or Replicant will be immediately familiar) is the reason I stuck to it.

Because it's open source, Google can't put their objectionable code directly into Android - that's what their proprietary apps and services are for, and those are where you begin to lose your freedom and control.

Are you referring to a specific recommendation? I'll gladly change or remove it if I included something with worse privacy or security unknowingly.

Overall though, Linus' law ("given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow") is a huge factor when it comes to privacy and security in my opinion. If an open source app is bad in one of those aspects, it will be noticed and fixed (or forked). Additionally, community driven projects like OSM simply don't have any reason or motivation to spy. They're a collaborative effort owned and developed by their users, not a company driven by capital and short-term profit.

Omni Notes is the best Google Keep replacement I've found yet.

You're right though, it's surprising how hard it is to find a note taking app that's just simple and intuitive.

Yeah, ads are a terrible and unsustainable business model anyways. I think it's much better (both for the creator and for the business and community in general) to support YouTubers you like through something like Patreon.

SkyTube is another free YouTube client which works really well. One feature I am very fond of (not sure if NewPipe has that as well?) is 'subscribing' to channels through a local database, without a YouTube account.

I was surprised as well, I do believe that default GPS should work regardless. However, I tried 3 different spots and could not get a single location after minutes of trying.

I'm not an Android developer, but could it be that applications are just expecting that API? It would make sense for Google to want to route location requests through what's usually their service...

Sorry! I just set up my blog and only tested it on my phone, where it worked well. I can see why fonts could be small, the default stylesheet is using absolute values. Should've checked that before...

Will fix as soon as possible!

Edit: It should be somewhat better now, with relative font size values. Still not ideal, I gotta refresh my CSS skills and work more on the stylesheet sometime soon.

Thanks again for letting me know.

OsmAnd includes Mapillary, a crowdsourced Google Street View alternative! The idea is that over time, a collaborative database will become even more extensive than the one of a single company can ever be (just like OSM). For me, in Vienna, it already is at least as good.

Regarding your point about driving being more of a slide show: Mapillary in OsmAnd can 'drive' you along streets quite smoothly. Of course, there are are some artifacts from deforming the images, but it doesn't 'move and load' like Google Street View, it continuously moves and keeps the images at a constant quality.